SoulCalibur VI by Bandai Namco is a fighting game centered around weapons—mainly swords. Unlike previous entries in the franchise, this game appears to be a reboot of the story of the 1st game with the addition of some characters that only appeared in later games. These characters having a story of their own makes sense, as I doubt any of these characters just bleeped into existence when they appeared in one of the games following the 1st game.
As this is a fighting game, it follows many traditional rules of fighting games. There are 2 characters on the screen—one on the left half, one on the right half—2 health bars on the top of the screen, with a timer in between them. The match continues until one of the fighters runs out of health or the timer reaches 0. Each of the characters has their own set of combos—although most of the time I was just button-mashing, not because the combos are bad but because I always do that in fighting games.
Many of the characters fight differently from one another, although this is usually a combination of 1 of 3 ranges—short range, medium range, and long range—and 1 of 3 speeds—quick, average, and slow. That said, there is still enough variation in the moves of each character to make each one feel unique.
There are 2 story modes in the game: “Libra of Souls” and “Soul Chronicles.” Soul Chronicles has both a single “main” timeline—like SoulCalibur V—and multiple smaller timelines devoted to each character—similar to SoulCalibur IV. Unlike SoulCalibur IV—where each timeline showed a different ending—the character timelines in this story mode weave together into one story. In other words, the timelines don’t contradict each other. To keep the character the timeline focuses on as the victor of every battle in the timeline, the space between events of the timelines differ. While most of the timelines start and end within 1 year, some of the timelines span multiple years. The “main” timeline constantly switches between characters and spans 4-5 years.
The other story mode, Libra of Souls, tells the story of your own custom character. This story takes place alongside the “main” timeline from Soul Chronicles and occasionally intersects with many of the character-focused timelines. In order to help you keep the story straight between both modes, nodes will be unlocked in the Soul Chronicles mode as you play through the Libra of Souls story. These nodes display information about when your custom character interacted with one of the game’s standard characters relative to that character’s own personal timeline.
Libra of Souls also occasionally allows you to make choices as to how the story should progress. In every one of these choices I could find, there were only 2 options: a “good” option—labeled as the “order” option—and an evil option—labeled as the “chaos” option. Although these choices would sometimes influence the next few missions I took, most of them simply decided if my character leaned more towards order or chaos. While I imagine which way your character leans will affect some areas of the story, for the most part the story appears to be unchanged by how you character acts. Though to be fair, since Libra of Souls is meant to be “cannon” with the game’s main story, such a thing is very hard to avoid.
Libra of Souls is also the only mode in the game to feature a level-up system for your character. I usually don’t like when fighting games try to add a level-up function and this time was no different. Luckily, it only affects how much health your character has, but this would sometimes result in fights where the enemy’s blows did twice as much damage as my own. Not to say that you can’t win fights against opponents 10 levels above you, its just a great deal harder. I tried to go through the main story without doing too many side missions, and for the most part it worked, although there were a few times near the game’s end where I needed to stop what I was doing in the main story and play through multiple side missions just to give myself a fighting chance. I realize this view might seem weird, but I am of the opinion that side missions should be a choice, not a requirement.
While you can’t play as your custom character from Libra of Souls in any other mode, there is an option to make custom characters for versus and online modes. You can use the character creation mode even if you haven’t played either of the story modes, although just as you can’t use any custom characters created in Libra of Souls, you can’t use any custom characters that were created outside of Libra of Souls.
The character creation mode has the same options as the character creator in Libra of Souls, so it is possible to make identical characters if you can remember what options you picked. While SoulCalibur VI’s character creator doesn’t have as many options as the character creator from SoulCalibur V, it does have more options than the character creator in SoulCalibur IV. You can edit the character’s hairstyle, body build, face type, and voice type—along with adjusting the pitch of the voice. There are even different races to choose from—human, elf, angel, manifested (a race unique to the SoulCalibur series)—but your choice of race is purely cosmetic, it doesn’t affect how the character plays. You can also choose what equipment the character wears, although some equipment options conflict with each other and in most cases the game will force you to remove the piece(s) of equipment that conflict with the piece of equipment you are trying to add.
Luckily, the game tells you if there is a conflict between equipment you are trying to add and equipment your character is already wearing and it asks you if you still want to add the new piece of equipment. When the question comes up, the equipment that your character is wearing that conflicts with what you are trying to add will glow white. Finally, you can choose a fighting style for the character to use. The fighting styles available for the custom characters are the fighting styles used by all the game’s base and dlc characters. You can even give them the fighting style of the game’s guest character, the Witcher. I point this out because in SoulCalibur IV and SoulCalibur V, you couldn’t choose the fighting style of any of the guest characters. The character creator for versus and online characters also allows you to choose the weapon your character uses for that style from a set of weapons, although the weapon you choose for is purely for appearance, it will not affect your damage output—as opposed to Libra of Souls where every weapon you find has a set damage value.
The game also has an arcade mode and a versus mode—both local and online—but as this is true of most fighting games, I didn’t feel the need to talk about them much. Arcade mode has you take on a list of fighters while versus allows you to play against a computer of your choosing or against another player. Online versus has both ranked mode—where you are placed against someone the game ranks as near your skill level—and casual mode—where you can be pitted against anyone, regardless of skill level. You can also choose to set up a private match and invite a friend of your choosing to play the game over the Internet with you. These options are usually standard for most multiplayer games and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary with them. Not to say this is a bad thing, multiple games use these same set of options for a reason.
Overall, I enjoyed playing SoulCalibur VI—even though the level-up system in Libra of Souls caused me a great deal of frustration. As such, I think a fair rating for the game would be 8.5/10.
Check Out the SoulCalibur VI Trailer:
https://youtu.be/kIEX09bX20E
SOULCALIBUR VI is available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You can order via the official website or at fine retailers. The game is rated T for Teens.
PlayStation 4 Review
I am a recent Computer Science/Game Development Programming Chapman University Graduate. I am a life long enthusiast of computer/video gaming and my favorite game genres are adventure, choice-driven stories, fighting, and racing. My favorite game/movie series include but aren't limited to 'Legend of Zelda'; 'Dragon Age'; 'Persona'; 'Sonic the Hedgehog'; 'Mario'; 'Metroid' ;'Megaman'; 'Naruto'; 'Batman'; 'Spiderman'; 'Star Wars'; and 'Star Trek.'
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